Highway freight trucks are widely used throughout the world for transporting goods of all types from one place to another. Because the bed of the truck is so high above ground level, e.g., about four feet, it is a normal procedure to load and unload such trucks from a dock that is about the same height above ground level as the truck bed. The dock usually is part of a warehouse that can be locked to protect the goods waiting to be loaded onto a truck as well as the goods unloaded from a truck. It is not always feasible to have a freight loading dock as a part of a building and at the same level as the truckbed. Accordingly, other means have been developed for assistance in loading and unloading freight from such trucks. One such means is to employ a folding tailgate on the truck which can be raised or lowered like an elevator. Another means is to employ a movable platform that can be placed alongside a truck such that freight can be transferred from the truck to the platform or vice versa. The movable platform can then raise or lower the freight to whatever elevation is desired for another location or lowered to ground unloading the freight from the platform. I have developed and marketed for the last few years such a movable elevatable platform having two aligned access ramps on the front and back, respectively, of the platform. One ramp provides access from the platform to an unloading level, which may be at ground level or at any selected elevation up to the maximum height of about five feet. The loading/unloading travel of the freight handler is substantially a straight line from truck bed to platform to unloading level. While this straight line travel across the ramp is appropriate for most situations, there are many occasions where it would be desirable to travel from the truck to the platform and then turn right or left and move perpendicular to the previous travel direction to travel from the platform to the unloading level, or vice versa for loading.
It is an object of this invention to provide a novel freight loading and unloading .elevator platform having the lifting arms in a parallelogram arrangement. It is another object of this invention to provide such a novel mobile freight loading elevator platform having two folding access ramps providing travel onto and off of the platform in directions perpendicular to each other. Still other objects will become apparent from the more detailed description which follows.